


The Path of the Devout

by Project0506



Series: Soft Wars [135]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Humor, Star Wars AU - Soft Wars, Worldbuilding, brothers being brothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:14:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28475244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: Doom takes up a cause the same way he does everything: wholly.
Series: Soft Wars [135]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775
Comments: 55
Kudos: 290





	The Path of the Devout

**Author's Note:**

> Happy New Year!!!!

“Have you been wet shaving?”

“You know most people,” Keeli sighs, “lead with ‘hello’.”

“That’s a ‘no’,” the Torrent medic observes far too cannily.

Torrent’s Captain pops up like a Whac-a-Porg over the medic’s shoulder. He wields an entire dressed plainshog like a shield. “‘Hello’,” he smarms, “we brought protein.”

It is, Doom thinks as he shoos CTs out of door panel and shoos CTs over to the food prep corner, fairly indicative of how the rest of the evening will go.

“Just put it in the Commander’s Cook Nook,” Doom’s current least-favorite Captain waves breezily. Doom would mock his manners but it in fairness, it’s about all he’s capable of at the moment.

Keeli’s told many stories about his twin, as far back as ARC training. Younger, he’d claimed, and naturally less-good-looking. Has himself a double helping of Obstinate coded helix strands brewed on his side of their tank. Keeli’s brother wrestles him into a chair and clucks disapprovingly at the remnants of his fade, victim of the several tendays of ground campaign.

“Who did your lines?”

“There’s nothing wrong with my lines.”

“They’re some of the worst I’ve ever seen.” ‘Little brother’, Keeli had claimed his twin was. Khi’vod. Vod’ika. Doom recognizes the medic’s tone, one _just_ north of needling, that casual note carefully crafted to just barely grate.

“There’s _nothing wrong_ with my lines.”

Doom knows that tone too, the one that’s nothing less than a bratty Little who isn’t admitting to pout. He’s starting to get the impression that Keeli might have … overstated … his seniority.

“They look like they were done with boot deodorizer and the wrong side of a disposable multitensil,” the medic chirps in feigned wonder.

Keeli grumbles. “Is there a _right_ side of a disposable multitensil for shaving?”

Kix ignores him.

Overstated, Doom thinks, by a lot.

Rex scuttles past the pair well on their descent into squabble.

“I don’t,” Doom assures Torrent’s Captain with no little threat to his tone, “call it a ‘Cook Nook’.”

“I wouldn’t judge,” Rex lies. It’s a shoddy attempt.

“Pain in my karking shebs,” Doom mutters. The brat grins like that was the entire goal. Doom glares, and Rex waves the plainshog in between them like a distraction.

It’s a very nice hog: young and supple, well-marbled, neatly downed. Dressing was expertly done too: smooth, even cuts, no waste. Easy to see Torrent has also picked up the habit of substituting for rations whenever dirtside. Doom had been mostly planning a faux stew, or maybe a pastry. Pan-fried meats, tossed together with a savory gravy, topped with a flaky crust, something easy enough to fake impressive. It’d be a shame to bury this haul in a pie though, and he starts considering whether roasting wouldn’t better suit. Thin sliced strips, he’s got odds and ends to whip up a couple different marinades for variety. Plus the vegs the boys dug up were nice and crisp. Open flame cooking, better conversation flow around a more casual meal. They’ll be short a starch but that’s the easiest thing to rectify. Yeah, that’s shaping up something nice.

“Good job, kid,” Doom says. He hasn’t nearly forgotten his neighbor squad’s half-feral, half-bite-sized, whole entire handful of a CT who’d sooner chew your arm off at the elbow than admit he wanted you to notice when he’d done well.

“Thanks,” Rex drawls, all haughty dismissal. Can’t figure out how to hide the pleased little edges of a smile, though. Force damn Doom hopes this kid doesn’t play Sabacc; they’d eat him alive.

Doom’s nice enough not to call him on it. “Slice,” he orders instead and passes him back the hogmeat and a slab board, “thin as you can make it.” He huffs and also points out the _proper_ knife for meats, as soon as Rex looked like he was making for a paring. Thank the little gods at least he didn’t pull out a multitool, heathen.

It’s easy enough to fake a decadent amount of variety, if you know how. Most of the marinades he mixes have most the same ingredients in different ratios, and he can double the options by strategically combining even those. A sweet and a vinegary for a savory, a savory and a spicy for a different feel to the kick. He’s learned how to make a little go a distance, and more he’s learned how to make that little excel.

Ribbon-thin curls of meat are split between bowls, stacked in the small, refurbished conservator that’s always been just enough for Doom’s needs. When the bowls are filled, Rex packs up the remnants and moves on to the vegetables without needing to be asked. It’s almost nice.

“… with very few remaining prehensile digits and also _cataracts_ _…_ ”

“And how was I supposed to get it cleaned up _during a siege_?”

“Isn't it fortunate for you that I came prepared for this. Sit.”

Keeli can’t see Rex’s grin from where his chin is tilted and turned to catch the light, but the shadow of the glare he tips their way says he suspects. His brother finishes his inspection and tugs his chin back to center.

“I don’t have enough time to make you actually presentable,” Kix grumbles, “but I can at least clean up your neck, make you not look squadless.”

“I’m supposed to be helping the Commander-”

“ _Sit_.”

Keeli retakes his seat with ill-grace. “You know I don’t see you being this perfectionistic with _Rex’ika_.”

“Leave ‘Rex’ika’ out of this,” Rex grumbles to the dusty yellow sativ roots he’s slicing.

“Leave the Captain out of this,” Kix echoes. “Peon.”

“ _I’m_ a Captain too!”

“And the mind boggles. Can’t fathom why. It’s clearly not because of your appearance.”

“Oh who knows, maybe _competence_?” Keeli leans forward and whines. “Commander I could use a little backup here?”

Kix smacks him back into the chair. “If it was _competence_ then _I’d_ be the one in charge. Captain hand me that towel,” he orders. With no apparent irony whatsoever. Rex affects longsuffering but does, in fact, hand him the towel.

Doom doesn’t know _where_ that pouch appears from, with it’s rows of lethal-sharp straight-edged razors, or why the brushed metal handles are a bright Torrent blue. Doom isn’t sure he wants to know. The medic wields his shears like a professional. Like he’s spent all his life practicing. There _is_ , Doom wonders, still a war they’re all supposed to be fighting right?

Doom splays alternating rings of yellow and green cucurbits on an oakboard. He eyes the pattern of it, then piles a mound of bright red capsic chunks in the center. Yes, good contrast.

They join the rest in the conservator, and the tools join Rex’s in the sanitizer. And without anything to occupy his hands, Doom can no longer ignore the considering glances Torrent’s Medic sends his own carefully regimented hairstyle.

No. No a galaxy of no, a hundred billion times no. Keeli’s coiffure is excessive on the best days and his brother is precisely as bad. They are supposed to be, Doom thinks everyone but him consistently forgets, _actual soldiers_.

“Have you ever considered -” the medic starts and Doom decides wisdom has no bones with prudently-timed retreat.

“Coward,” Keeli accuses as he goes. Judicious, Doom prefers to think of it.

He ducks through the command tent’s autodoors and isn’t at all surprised to find a blond shadow right on his heel. Lingering would make him the next target, likely, and Doom’s own exit very neatly validates his own. Always been an opportunistic little brat, Rex.

It’s a little nostalgic.

It wasn’t overwhelmingly often that it happened: those Shebse were rabid about keeping their kid close at hand, and between Ponds and Bly their scheduling was the sort of arcane, eldritch beast they needed to pull it off. But every so often they would have an off-world or an Advance Tactics just a little too advanced for the biter.

And it’s not like the Shebse could leave him with their _other_ neighbors. All it took was once of Rex _and_ Gree sneaking aboard their transit (‘I wanted to see how he did it! Did you know you could reroute power past the airlock subpanel for long enough to-’) to put _that_ idea to bunk.

The only sensible option in that hallway was Squad Chekar. Doom would dare anyone to prove otherwise.

The door slides shut on Keeli’s insincere protests and his brother’s insincere mockery. The painted, storied warrior Doom can’t help but still think of as the neighbor’s kid falls into step with him. “Not going to supervise?”

Rex snorts. “Pass,” he sighs. “Whatever you’re up to will be much more interesting than handing Kix sharps.”

“Well,” Doom says as fakely casual as he can, “good to know who’s wearing the command antenna in Torrent Company.”

“‘Commander’,” Rex shoots back in his whiniest Little-Brother, “‘you think I’m deadly right? Tell my brother I’m deadly!’”

Huh, touche. He scuffs the back of a bratty back just hard enough to threaten his balance. The pissy kitten glare hasn’t changed.

“How are you _still_ an asshole,” Rex grumbles, and the pissy kitten snipes hasn’t changed either.

“Practice.”

“Ugh.”

There’s a frenzied relief in the afternoon air and it hits Doom like the haze of heat rolling in off the Ryloth deserts. There’s a mash of companies crushing together in this encampment. Vod pitches tents next to vod, bunks up with vod and doesn’t pay any attention to the color of his paint. There’s singing, always terrible and already tipsy, rattling up from one huddle. In another, troopers have stripped to the waist and scuff and throw each other with all the intent of a litter of vulptex cubs. In some, vode sit silent, wrapped around each other unheeding of the sucking heat that sticks blacks to skin.

They could have lost Cascade here today. They could have lost Torrent, lost Ghost. Nearly lost Winder. Bad intel, stubborn locals, inexperienced tactics: today could have been a devastation. Doom rounds clusters of vode reminding each other they’re alive, his neighbor’s kid in his wake.

It’s a Quake Sgt manning the little oven they’ve snapped together for smoking, dried wood tented inside caverns dug cleverly into red stone walls. Sgt Scraps, Doom knows.

He thinks he shouldn’t. He leads a Regiment, one trooper in one Company in one Battalion should be too far beneath his notice to even register. It isn’t how the units were designed. It isn’t how CCs were designed. They were meant to command, not commingle.

But Doom staffed Quake himself. Took a line off his neighbors’ holopad and trained them how he wanted. Runs with them whenever they roll. Every Company in the 57th is his, but Quake is _his_ , just the same as Ghost belongs to the Marshall Commander of the GAR.

Sgt Scraps hops up off his flat stone perch at their approach. He grins, huge. “Nun’ika, grab two fat ones,” he hollers over his shoulder. “Saved you the best ones, sir,” he cackles. “Scraped all the bugs off myself.”

“Somehow now I’m even more worried.” Doom drawls. Sgt Scraps snaps a nearly-rude salute.

“Hunnerd percent bug free, Commander, or your money back. Any bugs you find in it were added later by some no-doubt dastardly hooligans.” Cheeky.

Cheeky, and an almost oppressive sort of chipper. A weaponized optimism.

It’s a Cascade Cpl fishes two birds out of the smoke hut and ties them off. His face is wooden, his eyes hollow; he moves jerky like a black-market Dejarik piece coded on a junkyard board. He doesn’t shake. He looks as if it takes everything he’s got to stand. Sgt Scraps accepts the birds glove-to-glove and gently chivies him off to strip tiny, fragrant leaves of herbs off reedy stems.

_I have him, declarative_ , Sgt Scraps signs and every man of Quake makes Doom ferociously proud. _Need to leave me the Torrent too interrogative._

_Got use for him_ , Doom flashes back and Sgt Scraps, snickering, obediently shoves off his bundle to the Captain Doom has decided he’s brought along for hauling things.

_Thanks,_ Rex signs and he might roll his eyes but the position of his hands stay _genuine_ without drooping towards _sarcastic_.

“You have any of your boys that need keeping out of trouble, send them my way,” Sgt Scraps assures the younger man who vastly outranks him.

“Feel free to grab anyone who doesn’t look occupied,” the Captain responds and means ‘anyone who looks alone’.

They could have lost Torrent Company today. They came flimsi-width from losing Cascade. CT or CC, ‘engineered to withstand stress’ or not, you never get used to the drop after that panic-high. No trooper should be solitary who doesn’t want to be.

Doom would have run out of reports to discuss, if Keeli’s brother had shown up any later.

Sgt Scraps lets his face go a feral sort of gleeful. Exaggerated, still, but neither the Torrent Captain or the Cascade Cpl know him well enough to know better. “Conscripts!” he glees. “ _Minions_!”

“Not your minion,” the Cpl mutters, but the words form around the shadow of a smile. He obediently sets to work on the next pile of herbs the chef dumps on his workboard. Rex snorts, with no apparent irony whatsoever.

Doom rolls his eyes. Tubies.

He doesn’t need to call out his goodbyes. He turns to go and the Captain is right there on his heel, poultry in hand.

This too is familiar. The shadow at Doom’s side is quiet and alert, eyes bright and assessing. When Rex was clustered in the middle of the Shebse, he was a chirrupy little tuber sprout who spit questions faster than a repeater canon. The Rex who stayed with Chekar was always more reserved. Withdrawn, even, right at the beginning.

‘S’not right,’ A’den had declared after thorough reference of the care and feeding manual the Shebse had quietly left them. ‘Gotta fix it,’ he decided and promptly did just that with the same ugnaught-headed determination he used to slice trainer terminals to pirate holofilms. Davijaan and Mar’ek had both long learned not to bother trying to divert him. Doom, by then, was well practiced in making sure whatever he got up to, he didn’t get caught.

A Chekar Plan was always a Chekar Plan, regardless of which of them had it. They all, always, played parts.

“Assessment?” Doom rumbles an invitation to their old game, and Rex tips the flattest glare his way in response.

“I’m not six anymore,” he grouses and it’s good that he, too, remembers.

Once Squad Chekar spent nearly a tenday watching their neighbors’ little hip-pouch-pet CT. They’d had to find their own ways of teasing out the natural curiosity from the unnaturally quiet, quietly angry kid who had needed to be left behind.

“Gotten rusty?” Doom soothes in saccharine commiseration. “That’s okay, I’m told it happens.”

“You really do think you’re clever, don’t you?”

Doom hums, but doesn’t speak. He doesn’t need to. Rex has gotten taller, gotten skills and battles under his gunbelt. He still can’t turn down a challenge.

“Meat,” he starts, “good birds well smoked. You were planning to cook with them but you’ll use what we brought instead. But you went to pick them up anyway.”

“One,” Doom awards. “Four more.”

Rex takes his time, chews on his consideration. “Uniform,” he finally settles on. “You’re not in shell or blacks but it’s still. Not official, that isn’t the word.”

“Professional?”

“That.”

In truth, Doom’s clothes are sixth and seventh hand, likely. Scavenged, scrubbed up and shined. Patched and polished. The pieces didn’t come together but they were picked to match, the layers were meant to complement. Every piece and layer says ‘works with my hands’.

It’s fitting, for the statement Doom tends to want to make, times like these.

“Two,” he agrees.

They walk. Rex deliberates.

The Northwash Caverns Encampment is far more ramshackle than is recommended. The ways they’ve dug in were hasty and ill-planned. There are enclaves tucked up in and behind cover, long stretches of sandy tarp blocking pathways between them from overhead view. Lookouts and snipers are posted not up on towers purpose-built, but in pocks in cliff faces where the flash of a rifle bolt or the glint off macrobinocs isn’t an immediate retaliatory shelling. Remnants of downed transports still line the west, dragged in to enforce a buffer zone and fading in to crumbling ancient pillars casting long shadows over the desert floor. From here the army spills out from the fortified bunkers sunk deep into protective caves, out into the dry air.

And just there, just where the deep shadows of honeycomb caverns swirl in with the lighter gray of the pillars’ shade, there’s a different sort of mixing hesitantly starting to bubble.

It’s one or two at first, a Twi’lek woman in vicious debate with a Ghost logistitian, a bored-looking teen translating for the two. A pair of Twi’lek men holding wooden planks in place while a Torrent trooper hammers nails to a hunched elder’s exacting instructions. A small Twi’lek child staring in morbid fascination between two clone faces they don’t have the skill to differentiate.

When the various Companies of the GAR had been driven off grounds and holdings, the Twi’leks had been driven from their villages and homes. When the GAR had scrabbled for defensive positions, the Twi’leks knew the caves and hills and how to hide in them. When the GAR had marshaled counteroffensives, the Twi’lek had rallied beside them with whatever weapons they could find to take back their land.

The GAR encampment is a ramshackle one with few defined boundaries, and it pours into the same valleys as the Twi’lek refugees, swirling together as they flow. It’s impossible to miss the bright-on-white flashes of troopers (only disgustingly occasionally speckled with actual _camouflage_ armor it seems the GAR only bothered to expense for one in every five Recon troopers) dotted among the bright color-on-sand patches of Twi’lek in traditional garb.

If, say, one were playing a game requiring observation, it’s something one would most assuredly note. If, say, one were playing a game where one was to state one’s observations out loud…

“Three,” Doom warns with a flat glare. “And if you keep cheating I will make it four.”

Rex grins, irrepressible. “Leaving GAR-only areas, heading towards where the locals live,” he chirps somewhat obedient and clearly belated. Doom sniffs.

“You are all the worst traits of the Shebse,” he complains to the sky, the Force, whoever, whatever is listening. Rex, as expected, takes it as a compliment. He preens and promptly pretends he hasn’t. It’s a comforting thing, seeing these glimpses of Rex that hasn’t changed at all regardless of him getting a little taller. Keeli’s similar, still using jerky-dry humor to pretend he’s so much bigger than he is. Doom appreciates it more than he’d say, these tiny sparks of the familiar in a galaxy determined to constantly be shifting, and doing so in directions that consistently make no sense. “Ten kilos of asshole in a 5 kilo pouch,” he groans, just to needle that much more.

Rex’s face flattens in annoyance. “We are _the same height_ , di’kut.” He goes even more annoyed at the pitying glance Doom tips his light-gunner shoulders. “Why the kark does anyone put up with you?”

“Desperation,” Doom drawls and Rex pretends not to giggle-snort at that.

“Don’t oversell yourself,” he snickers. Brat. The furthest of the watchlights pass behind them.

They find the first experimental stalls of an impromptu market, cautiously cotched up against a canyon wall. Selections of staples, hesitant offerings of more involved foodstuffs, pastries and breads, candied fruits and the like. Nothing yet of jewelry or crafts; that’s Doom’s final barometer of a people on their way to healing. The first is the sounds of their musics, as it shades from determination and encouragement to rejoicing. The last is their markets, as their stalls stop seeming to huddle guiltily over a scant few non-essentials and start boasting color and life. Arts and toys, décor: proof of a land marching from survival to living.

“Trading with the locals,” Rex declares and it’s obvious he thinks he has the final answer. “As equals, not occupiers or liberators,” he continues and that’s closer. Closer, but not all the way there.

“Four,” Doom says and it’s always been fascinating to watch Rex when he’s proven wrong or incomplete. He doesn’t get frustrated, or at least not overmuch. He gets excited, the challenge thrills him. In the tenday Chekar minded him they’d driven themselves half wild coming up with scenarios that would confound him. They spun misdirections and irrelevant sidenotes into the cases they made up, dangled meaningless clues and secondary answers and the more complicated they made it, the more his face would light up as he picked at the hints he observed. Every twist would prompt the flash of a grin, every puzzle would have him bouncing on his toes in excitement.

Doom doesn’t even think the brat bit him after the second or third day. Worth it, mostly, for all the contrived tangents he’d twisted his brain into.

There isn’t much of choices on offer. Not poor, Doom has seen poor. The vegetables are plump, the meats fresh, the grains vibrant. Variety will come later. Rex peruses as though fascinated.

“You haven’t said who all you’re inviting to this whatever-it-is.”He’s bad at feigning casual too.

Or, Doom thinks, he pretends to be. Doom hasn’t decided whether or not he should be offended at how bad it is. He tips the younger man an eye at the tone. “Is that a question or an observation?”

Rex wrinkles his nose. He knows the rules, established long ago and never once changed: he gets five observations before he has to make his conclusion. And any question counts for two.

“Exclusive guest list,” he settles on.

“That’s your five.”

“Hm.”

Doom leaves him to it. He does actually have business here. Meats and vegetables are a sufficient meal, but Doom is intending for more than sufficient.

Rylothi tubers are tough, dry things and he hasn’t yet figured out a way to make them not so. Stewing perhaps, but he doesn’t have the time for that. Flatwraps, are a possibility, though they tend to be far more hardy than delicious. Maybe gourds? They could roast, but would they be enough different from the vegetables they’d already cut for grilling? Grains might be best, boiled-

“Breads,” Rex insists suddenly and bodily nudges him away from browsing the jewel-toned blends of wild picked grains or the hardy husks of something chewy and roastable Doom doesn’t have a name for. “If you’re going for an impression.”

“Breads do not in _any way_ suit the meal,” Doom protests but lightly. Rex has bony, stubborn shoulders and pointy, insistent elbows.

“It will,” he promises with all the confidence of an idiot that doesn’t know a thing about what he’s talking about.

“It will _not_ you tasteless brute.”

But Rex is waving at the breads and making giant tooka eyes back and forth between the booth attendant and Doom himself. They look related, the attendant, the tween manning the large makeshift oven, the elder kneading doughs, the child running and fetching. They all have the same grin at the vode’s antics, they titter the same in Ryl and their laughs are nearly identical.

Doom hadn’t planned this. He hadn’t been thinking any further than interrupting the manic, continual checking of Torrent’s Captain and Medic on each of their troopers in turn. He hadn’t planned for more than redirecting their energy, stopping them from winding themselves up tighter and tighter barreling headfirst towards a crack. He hadn’t planned for there to be eyes on them, assessing and reassessing, no matter how convenient it may become.

Doom hadn’t planned anything beyond tearing his neighbors’ kid’s eyes from battlefields past.

He acknowledges the nod that acknowledges him, and Rex pretends not to observe both vod and Twi’lek General from the corners of his eye.

“Breads,” Doom allows, because he doesn’t want this to fall into performance. Rex tucks his exuberance away. Stored for later, Doom thinks, not hidden as a shame. He’s glad of that.

Chekar had called a squad meeting that second night, after the wan, silent, bitterly angry CT had slipped off back to Shebs dorms to sleep. ‘It isn’t right,’ A’den had fretted. ‘What can we do?’ Mar’ek had worried. Davijaan had stayed silent, for once knowing his habit of saying the blatantly obvious wouldn’t help, no matter how well they all knew the Shebse wouldn’t be offworld long. ‘Distract,’ Doom had declared, and not a single member had protested.

Alphas ran packs of little brothers all at once for years. Chekar would not screw up watching one for a tenday.

“Guess now,” Doom orders, after they have haggled an exchange of their roasted birds in Basic and hand signs and the six words of Ryl Doom and Rex know between them. After warm loaves and rolls are stacked in brown flimsi sacks and handed off to the Captain who pretends he won’t have pilfered one by the time they make it back. “Or forfeit.”

“Good food, presented nicely. Both things we’ve hunted and local-made. Guests by invite, and specific ones of those. Dressed well, but in a way that doesn’t say army. Or Republic.” They retrace the dusty, narrow path through the first setting Twi’lek cook fires as they give way in favor of Vode clusters, communal mingling fading the closer they get to command center. “You’ve. Have you talked to Cody recently?”

It’s Rex’s conclusion, and it is as shrewd as he’s always been. Doom, this once, cannot fault him for wrapping it in question. Hope is a new thing to Vode, a new burr dug in under armor and burrowing deep into skin. Rex can’t speak it in any way but question: to declare it feels the worst sort of hubris.

Doom’s only met one man quite that brazen.

“I have,” he agrees. “Loudly contentious and filled with a lot of speculation on the shelf-life of brain cells, but I have.”

Rex smiles, tight and uncertain. Doom isn’t one for prevarication, not in duty and not in what he’s is starting to patch together of a personal life.

“If the fool is crazy enough to pull this off, he’ll need more than he thinks he does.”

“Allies,” Rex knows.

“People,” Doom corrects. “Willing to deal with people.” People willing to see Vode beyond the harsh lines of their armor, people willing to trade with them, work with them. House them, maybe, if they need it. There are massive hyperlanes of Cody’s plans to be resolved still. But however it ends up, if Doom has signed on to this insanity he will ensure they do it _right_. If Kote wants to declare a people, Doom will not allow him to do it any less than completely. Alor has called Doom to his fight, and Quake never approaches a battle from a single direction.

Even if it means Doom peels himself apart from Commander, presses himself into Man that fits less uncomfortably with each attempt.

The Captain’s smile is fiercer, joyous. Doom hadn’t thought about what it would mean to _him_ , having others throw their lot in with this madness. “What do you need from me?”

“For one, stop flattening the bread.”

It shocks a laugh from the younger man, and Doom avails himself of the moment to steal back the bread the Captain had set himself up as guard over. The bag is at least one blatantly obvious roll short. “Be yourself,” Doom says and immediately corrects himself. “Be a _civilized_ version of yourself. Like you weren’t raised in a karking strill pen.”

The doors to the Command tent sway open with a chilled blast of conditioned air, a warm curl of spicy-scented marinades and a repeater canon of squabbling. Keeli and his twin heft out trays they manage not to spill, despite the constant no-doubt-entirely-accidental way their shoulders seem to unceasingly slam into each other.

“-lopsided!”

“It is standard GAR equipment for ARCs! _Rex’ika_ wears one.”

“Please leave Rex out of this,” Rex grumbles.

“If _Rex_ decided to nuna-dive out an airlock to try to hitch a ride on a pod of purrgil, would you – that was a bad analogy.”

Keeli deposits his armful and strokes his chin. “ _Can_ you ride a purrgil?”

Kix shuffles Keeli’s tray just inches over and thunks his own down. He spins and thwacks his twin with a towel.

They’ve have mustered a sort of formation in Doom and Rex’s absence, wrangled meats and vegetables and mixes of sauces and arranged what Doom had left undone in a colorful array no doubt entirely to the aesthetic of only one or the other of them. They’ve dragged Doom’s little tibanna stovetop to place of prominence center of the makeshift circle, topped it with grill grating to heat, and ringed it with tool racks topped with rough-hewn planks for tables. The chairs are ugly GAR-issued metal-look plastoid topped with garish hand-made, gorgeously soft cushions.

It wasn’t quite what Doom was intending but he thinks it may be better for it. The desert air is cooling and first brave stars flicker in the night. The tibanna generator spins blue heat off in curls.

“We’ll eat outside,” Kix says and it has a tone of warning. Doom doesn’t know what Keeli has told him, doesn’t know what those two know about how Command Tents are wired. He’ll trust their expertise.

“If that’s what the brass commands,” he grumbles because the Commander has a reputation to maintain. The Captains trade snickers, jostle shoulders against each other. The Medic Lieutenant ignores them all.

“Nice trim,” Rex mutters just loud enough for Doom to catch. “How hard was it to find those lines then?”

“You,” Keeli deadpans back, “are _already_ the youngest one here. Trying to go for ‘youngest on planet’?”

“I _won_ that shoot-off.”

“You are karked in the head if you think that.”

“Guests,” Kix interrupts mildly.

Guests. Plural. For a second Doom doesn’t remember how to breathe. In a single second he relives the moment when Kote had convinced him this was more than madness.

“My daughter, Hera,” Cham Syndulla introduces with the stiffness Doom has come to find is simply his nature. “My wife sends her apologies, but our son required a quieter evening.”

There’s no mistaking the gesture, the Twi’lek General accepting Doom’s invitation, approaching his table with family instead of advisors. Doom’s invitation was understood, his overture returned. He packs away emotion for later.

For now, Doom has given himself a mission for his Alor. “Please pass on our greetings,” he says. “I am Doom, of Quake.” It is a title without rank, innocuous enough to not raise suspicions. One day it will be his name. “This is Keeli, of Cascade.”

“And an assortment of my baby brothers,” Keeli continues smoothly.

Were eyes weapons, Keeli would be flayed, skinned, roasted and flash frozen. The child at Syndulla’s waist giggles wildly. Syndulla himself unwinds the smallest of smiles.

It still carries doubt and caution. Doom will not fault him for that. Syndulla is willing to consider the faceless hoards that marched to war on his planet could be more than machines. There is none better than the Twi’lek to understand how a body can be owned, choice can be sold. Syndulla is here, has accepted an invitation to eat with them. He is willing to be convinced that, despite circumstance and propaganda, the bodies under the shells are people. It is Doom’s duty to his people to convince him.

Syndulla, the Twi’lek. The people of any other planet Doom puts boots on, who would be willing to believe.

The Vod’alor is convinced they must free themselves. Afterwards, Doom has convinced him, they will want friends.

Twi’lek are the first to break bread with Vode. They aren’t the last.

**Author's Note:**

> (“I’m actually older,” Rex tries vainly to convince the galaxy’s most skeptical child. To his right, Keeli slowly shakes his head in exaggerated pity and scoops an extra spoon of veg onto his plate. On his left, Kix pats his shoulder and passes him a loaf of bread.
> 
> Hera looks at Rex, looks to his right, looks to his left, and raises one extremely judgmental eyebrow. “That,” she drawls, primly, “sounds _very_ sus.”
> 
> Rex tears into his bread and will never admit that he pouts.)


End file.
